… and went back to the squadroom.
It was not yet twelve noon.
DAVID HORNE was trying to convince his boss that the two Keystone Kops had no idea the bills had been switched.
“This is like the old shell game,” he said. “You have to guess which shell the pea is under. But the pea is really in the palm of our hand.”
“I’m not familiar with the shell game,” Parsons said.
His full name was Winslow Parsons III, and he had been recruited into the Secret Service when he was twenty-two and a senior at Harvard. He’d been present in Dallas, walking alongside the presidential limo when Kennedy was assassinated, but he hadn’t been the one to protect the President with his own body—well, no one had, for that matter. Similarly, when John Hinckley, Jr., shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, Parsons had missed his big chance at immortality by not hurling himself in the path of the bullet. At the age of sixty-four, he was still tall and lean and he had all his hair, albeit turning gray, and he thought he looked like Charlton Heston, whom he greatly admired, but he bore no resemblance to him at all. In any case, he didn’t know what a shell game was. In Cambridge, they did not have such things as shell games.
“You palm the pea,” Horne explained. Or tried to explain. “Same way we palmed the bills.”
He was thinking this is four days before New Year’s Eve, and we’re having a big party, and I should be checking my booze, see how much I have to order. Setups, too.
“How did they come across the bills in the first place?” Parsons asked.
“A case they’re investigating.”
“What kind of case?”
“A woman was murdered.”
Parsons looked at him.
“It gets complicated,” Horne said.
“Life gets complicated,” Parsons replied.
“Yes, sir, it does.”
“Lifeiscomplicated.”
“Yes, sir, it most certainly is.”
“How’dweget involved in this, is what I’d like to know,” Parsons said. “If you please.”
“A flagged super showed up on our list, sir. Man who passed it had eight thousand total in similar bills. We yanked them out of circulation. Should have been the end of the story.” Horne shrugged. “Instead, the woman got killed and suddenly it’s Mickey Mouse time.”
“What’s the woman got to do with it?”
“He stole the bills from her.”
“The eight thousand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He admitted that?”
“No, sir. He told me he won them in a crap game.”
“Is that likely?”
“Hardly.”
“And you say you recovered eight thousand supers?”
“Yes, sir, and replaced them with clears. The old shell game, sir,” he said, and smiled.
Parsons did not smile back.
“Why the hell did you do that?” he asked.
“Do what, sir?”
“Give the man good money for bad?”
“In retrospect, I’m glad I did, sir. All this sudden police interest.”
Parsons looked at him skeptically.
“Never mind in retrospect,” he said. “Why did you do it in thefirst place?”
“I thought he might make a fuss, sir, if we simply grabbed eight thousand dollars of his.”
“Has this man got a record?” Parsons asked.
“Yes, sir. Took a burglary fall seven years ago, did three and a third at Castleview.”
“Ex-cons don’t usually make fusses.”
“But he might have, sir.”
“Any chance we can pop him back in?”
“Not unless he commits a crime, sir.”
“How’d this woman get the eight thousand?”
“I have no idea. But, sir …”
“Yes?”
“There’s more.”
“Let me hear it.”
“The locals found close to a hundred thousand in her safe deposit box.”
“Supers?”
“I didn’t check them, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Well, they had them in their possession, sir. They were here to look at the list of serial numbers used in a kidnapping …”
“What kidnapping?” Parsons asked at once. “Has there been a kidnapping?”
“No, sir, that was just confetti.”
“But you say they were here with a hundred thousand dollars …”
“Ninety-six, actually, sir.”
“… that they found in her safe deposit box?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you didn’t check thebills?”
His eyes were wide open now.
“I had no opportunity to do so, sir. Without arousing suspicion.”
“Suspicion isalready aroused,” Parsons said. “Why the hell do you think they came here? They’realready suspicious!”
“I don’t think so, sir. They’re a simple pair of flatfoots investigating a murder. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more,” Parsons said sourly. “Nothing more than a murder.”
“That’s all, sir.”
“Ninety-six thousand dollars in cash and you don’t think they’re going to smell something fishy?”
“Sir, my job was to yank those supers out of circulation. That’s what I did, sir.”
“Splendid,” Parsons said.
Horne never knew when he meant it.
“But how long do you think it’ll be before these nitwits realize there aremore phony hundreds out there?” Parsons asked. “How long will it be before they come back to us?”
The room went silent.
“Why was the woman killed, do you know?” Parsons asked.
“I would suspect to keep her quiet,” Horne said.
“Do you think this may be Witches and Dragons again?”
“It could be, sir.”
Parsons nodded.
“Find out,” he said. “Give Mother a call.”
THE SIGN OVER the cash register read:
WE WILL NOT CASH BILLS LARGER THAN $50. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE. THANK YOU.
Wilbur Struthers took umbrage at this.
Perhaps this was because the only money he had in his wallet was a pair of singles and $400 in hundred-dollar bills. A glance at the cash register total informed him that he had spent $95.95 for two bottles of Simi Chardonnay, two bottles of Gordon’s gin, and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne.
“I’m afraid I only have hundred-dollar bills,” he told the cashier.
“We accept American Express, MasterCard, and Visa,” the cashier said.
“I only have cash.”
“Take a personal check, too, if you have proper ID,” the cashier said. “Driver’s license, or even a MetTrans card with a photo on it.”